Ethan Allen

Ethan Allen (21 January 1738-12 February 1789) was a Major-General of the Vermont Republic and a colonel of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Allen, the leader of the Green Mountain Boys, was most famous for his capture of Fort Ticonderoga alongside Benedict Arnold and his failed attack on Montreal in the winter of 1775.

Biography
Ethan Allen was born on 21 January 1738 in Litchfield, Connecticut, and he volunteered in the colonial militia in 1757 during the French and Indian War. He turned back after the siege of Fort William Henry resulted in a French victory, seeing no further combat. In 1770, Allen took part in a court case defending grant owners in the "New Hampshire Grants" of Vermont, and he took part in the formation of the Green Mountain Boys, a Vermont militia; his cousins Remember Baker and Seth Warner became captains at the head of some companies. Allen drove surveyors from New York away, occasionally turning to violence to maintain the independence of Vermont. When the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, he sided with the colonists in their rebellion against Great Britain as a result of the Westminster massacre, but he did not get along well with Benedict Arnold and the Continental Army, arguing with them over who would command the army that took Fort Ticonderoga. Allen as captured in a failed raid on Fort St. Jean (Montreal, Canada) at the Battle of Longue-Pointe in the winter of 1775, and he was exchanged for Arcihbald Campbell in 1778. Allen was breveted a colonel in the Continental Army, and he negotiated with the British for the rest of the war. Allen died of an apoplectic fit in 1789.